


Happy Tangled Lives

by alessandralee



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-07 00:29:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4242552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every Saturday morning, Skye likes to watch the cute girl down the street jog by her apartment, but she still hasn't introduced herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Tangled Lives

“You’re up early,” Raina practically coos from where she’s curled up at the breakfast nook.

Skye ignores her and heads straight for the coffeemaker. Caffeine. Caffeine will make her roommate tolerable.

It’s ten o’clock. That’s a perfectly reasonable time to wake up. It’s a little different from her sleeping schedule when they were still in college, but some things have to change.

“When did you even go to bed last night?” Raina continues, refusing to let Skye adjust to consciousness in peace and quiet.

Skye pours her coffee into a mug she grabs from the cabinet, adds a little milk and practically inhales it. It fortifies her just enough to allow her to submit to Raina’s early morning questioning.

“Five,” Skye admits. She’d been sucked into an endless stream of real life scary stories in Wikipedia sometime around two, and was too freaked out to turn the lights off until she fell asleep at her keyboard sometime around sunrise.

“So why the early wakeup, then?” Raina asks as Skye pops a cinnamon raisin bagel into the toaster. “Normally, you’d use that as an excuse to sleep in ‘til three.”

Skye glares at the toaster, but manages to respond calmly, “Errands.” After downing the last of her coffee, she elaborates, “And the desire to be a functioning adult on Monday.”

When the bagels pops out the toaster, Skye scrambles to get it buttered, pour herself a second cup of coffee, and escape to the safety of her bedroom before Raina can ask any more questions.

Once there, she settles in at her desk, cracks open her laptop and proceeds to ignore it in favor of her window.

10:18 AM

As expected, the cute brunette down the street jogs by. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and her navy blue sports bra and gray shorts barely show any signs of sweat, despite the rising heat and humidity.

From her bedroom window, Skye watches her head down the block.

Normally, Skye doesn’t feel like a creep for doing this. There’s a hot woman outside her window, of course she’s doing to take notice. But forgoing sleep just for the pleasure of doing so seems like a bit much.

When the woman turns the corner, Skye leans back against her desk chair and stares at the ceiling.

 _You need to pull it together,_ she gives herself a mental pep talk. _You need to get a life, get a hobby, get out of your room more. Or at least just talk to her._

That would probably ruin the fantasy of the Saturday morning jogger, though.

She probably has terrible taste in music. Or she has one of those yappy little dogs that she can’t take on a run because it would keel over in five minutes. Or she’s straight.

That would be Skye’s luck.

Regardless, Skye needs to do something about her little crush, otherwise her lurking, nosy roommate is going to clue into it and never let her live it down.

\---

The next Saturday morning finds Skye watering the plants that sit in front of her and Raina’s ground floor apartment. She went to bed at 11 last night, so Raina can’t fault her for being up a reasonable hour this time.

Still, Skye can make out her floral robe, leaning against the living room window, as she’s doubtless watching Skye.

But that’s probably because they generally leave the landscaping to their landlord, Phil. Skye actually spent thirty minutes yesterday evening trying to find the sprinkler attachment for the hose.

Like clockwork, the object of Skye’s affections jogs by shortly after 10:15. Out of the corner of her eye, Skye can make out the sweat dripping down the other woman’s brow, proving that she is in fact a real human being and not just some beautiful hallucination.

The totally real, totally gorgeous jogger slows to a stop a few feet away from Skye. Skye tenses up, not sure what’s about to happen.

“Excuse me?” the jogger gets her attention.

Shit, she’s British. Skye hadn’t been expecting a British accent. That makes her even hotter.

“Yeah?” Skye turns to face her, accidentally spraying her with the water from the sprinkler in her hand. “Shit, sorry.” She runs to turn the spigot off before she can do more damage.

“Don’t be,” the other woman says, when Skye returns. “That felt amazing.”

Quite frankly, the word amazing has never sounded as amazing as it does coming out of the Brit’s mouth.

Skye thinks she may have completely lost it at this point.

“Okay,” she smiles, glad to know she hasn’t scared her off so quickly. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Yes,” the brunette smiles back. “This is going to sound weird, but could I bother you for some water? Usually, I carry a water bottle when I run, but I guess I didn’t dry it properly, because there was some mold growing at the bottom of it this morning. I should really have a back-up, or maybe I should have just waited until I’d washed it again for my run, but I’m training for a half marathon, and I’m a stickler for my schedule.” She pauses, takes a deep breath and adds, “That was probably too much information.”

Skye shakes her head vehemently, “It’s fine. Just give me a sec, I’ll get you a glass.”

“Oh that won’t be necessary,” the woman tells her. “I can just drink from the hose and you can get back to what you’re doing.”

Quietly, Skye nods and untwists the sprinkler from the hose. Gingerly, the other woman, whose name Skye still doesn’t know, takes the hose from her. Skye walks to the side of the house and turns the spigot on.

The other woman takes a quick drink, then splashes water on her face and wrists.

“Thank you,” she calls, and Skye turns the water off.

Then, with a small wave, the cute jogger is off again.

Now that she no longer has a reason to waiting around outside, Skye abandons the pretense of watering Phil’s plants for her cool, air-conditioned apartment. She doesn’t even bother to bring the sprinkler back the toolshed out back.

\---

When the doorbell rings a few hours alter, Skye assumes it’s the UPS guy with the latest addition to Raina’s all-floral wardrobe.

She’s certainly not expecting her British jogger crush, holding a plate of cookies.

“Um… hi,” Skye answers the door, confused.

“Hi, I’m Jemma,” she introduces herself. “I just wanted to thank you for helping me out this morning?”

“You put time and effort into baking me cookies to thank me for five seconds of free hose-water?” Skye takes the tray from her anyway, and gestures for Jemma to follow her into the apartment.

Thankfully Raina’s gone out already, to do god-knows-what, god-knows-where.

“And lemonade,” Jemma says brightly, taking a thermos out of the bag slung over her shoulder. “Also, I like baking, and my roommate has started complaining that I’m making him fat. You’re a convenient excuse.”

Skye sets the tray down on the breakfast table. There’s a lacy sheet of paper over it, covered by snicker doodle, peanut butter cookies, and something Skye can’t identify, but assumes will probably taste good.

“Well, I can’t say no to snicker doodles,” Skye tells her. “Just let me get two glasses, unless you’d like the hose again.”

Jemma laughs, and Skye mentally congratulates herself for making that happen.

Skye puts two glasses on the table, and Skye pours peachy-pink liquid into it.

“It’s strawberry lemonade,” Jemma explains.

Skye nods.

“So how’s the training going?” Skye asks, helping herself to one of the mystery cookies.

It taste good like caramel and cheesecake. She’s definitely a fan.

Jemma takes a sip of her lemonade before answering, “Good. Better than I’d expected. I signed up with my ex in February, but then we broke up and she moved away. She was supposed to help me train for it, but I’d already paid the entrance fee, so I figured why not?”

Skye can’t help but smile at the mention of an ex-girlfriend. She may actually have a chance.

“Well it looks like you’re doing better than I probably could. I’ve never been one for cardio,” Skye explains.

Weights? She could force herself to lift. Martial arts? She’d managed to find a pretty great instructor, who specialized in tai chi. But cardio? That was the enemy as far as Skye was concerned.

“Well you look really good,” Jemma says.

Skye blushes. Is Jemma flirting? She really hopes Jemma is flirting.

“Thanks, I’ve got this whole tai chi slash kick-boxing slash kung-f u thing going on. At first I hated it, but I actually woke up excited for my 7AM tai chi class last Tuesday, so I guess miracles do happen,” Skye jokes.

“Sounds impressive,” Jemma tells her.

Jemma hangs around for a couple of hours, explaining how she’s a biochemistry professor at the local university. Skye is suitably impressed. They swap stories about awkward exes and nightmare dates. Skye’s finally glad that that one unfortunate shooting range date she went on a few months ago has proved useful. It’s much funnier now.

She’s not sure if Jemma’s lingering in the doorway on her way out for any particular reason, but she definitely hopes so.

“Are you doing anything one Friday?” Skye decides to bite the bullet and ask.

Jemma has one foot out the door, thermos in hand, but she turns around quickly to say, “I’m free.”

“Great. Do you want to maybe get drinks?” Skye suggests. “Or coffee, dessert, dinner, anything?”

She thinks she might have come on a bit strong, but Jemma just smiles.

“Coffee sounds lovely, and I can never say no to dessert.”

They exchange numbers and when Skye eventually closes the door behind Jemma, she even allows herself an excited fist pump in celebration.


End file.
